Anahuac | Page 6

us up the
river. Even at some distance from the mouth, sting-rays and jelly-fish
were floating about. As we rowed upwards, the banks were overhung
with the densest vegetation. There were mahogany trees with their
curious lop-sided leaves, the copal-plant with its green egg-like fruit,
from which copal oozes when it is cut, like opium from a poppy-head,
palms with clusters of oily nuts, palmettos, and guavas. When a
palm-tree on the river-bank would not grow freely for the crowding of
other trees, it would strike out in a slanting direction till it reached the
clear space above the river, and then shoot straight upwards with its
crown of leaves.
We shot a hawk and a woodpecker, and took them home; but, not many
minutes after we had laid them on the tiled floor of our room, we
became aware that we were invaded. The ants were upon us. They were
coming by thousands in a regular line of march up our window-sill and
down again inside, straight towards the birds. When we looked out of
the window, there was a black stripe lying across the court-yard on the
flags, a whole army of them coming. We saw it was impossible to get
the skins of the birds, so threw them out of the window, and the
advanced guard faced about and followed them.

On the sand in front of the village the Castor-oil plant flourished, the
_Palma Christi_; its little nuts were ripe, and tasted so innocent that,
undeterred by the example of the boy in the Swiss Family Robinson, I
ate several, and was handsomely punished for it. In the evening I
recounted my ill-advised experiment to the white-jacketed loungers in
the verandah of the inn, and was assured that I must have eaten an odd
number! The second nut, they told me with much gravity, counteracts
the first, the fourth neutralizes the third, and so on ad infinitum.
We made two clerical acquaintances in the Isle of Pines. One was the
Cura of New Gerona, and his parentage was the only thing remarkable
about him. He was not merely the son of a priest, but his grandfather
was a priest also.
The other was a middle-aged ecclesiastic, with a pleasant face and an
unfailing supply of good-humoured fun. Everybody seemed to get
acquainted with him directly, and to become quite confidential after the
first half-hour; and a drove of young men followed him about
everywhere. His reverence kept up the ball of conversation continually,
and showed considerable skill in amusing his auditors and drawing
them out in their turn. It is true the jokes which passed seemed to us
mild, but they appeared to suit the public exactly; and indeed, the Padre
was quite capable of providing better ones when there was a market for
them.
We found that though a Spaniard by birth, he had been brought up at
the Lazarist College in Paris, which we know as the training-school of
the French missionaries in China; and we soon made friends with him,
as everyone else did. A day or two afterwards we went to see him in
Havana, and found him hard at his work, which was the
superintendence of several of the charitable institutions of the city--the
Foundling Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and others. His life was one
of incessant labour, and indeed people said he was killing himself with
over-work, but he seemed always in the same state of chronic hilarity;
and when he took us to see the hospitals, the children and patients
received him with demonstrations of great delight.
I should not have said so much of our friend the Padre, were it not that
I think there is a moral to be got out of him. I believe he may be taken
as a type, not indeed of Roman Catholic missionaries in general, but of
a certain class among them, who are of considerable importance in the

missionary world, though there are not many of them. Taking the Padre
as a sample of his class, as I think we may--judging from the accounts
of them we meet with in books, it is curious to notice, how the point in
which their system is strongest is just that in which the Protestant
system is weakest, that is, in social training and deportment. What a
number of men go to India with the best intentions, and set to work at
once, flinging their doctrines at the natives before they have learnt in
the least to understand what the said natives' minds are like, or how
they work,--dropping at once upon their pet prejudices, mortally
offending them as a preliminary step towards arguing with them; and in
short, stroking the cat of society backwards in the most conscientious
manner. By the time they have accomplished